Candies are conventionally prepared by cooking combinations of sugar, fats and flavors until the sugar has inverted and the cooled mixture congeals into a solid mass. In these kinds of candies, all of the ingredients must be solubilized during the cooking process or the ingredients must be pulverized prior to the cooking process to an average particle size which will not produce a "gritty" mouth feel in the cooked candy. The cooking process, however, is most time consuming and expensive.
So to avoid those difficulties, a second type of candy is conventionally prepared without the conventional cooking method. In this process, the ingredients are mechanically milled until the average particle size of the ingredients is reduced to below that average size which produces the "gritty" mouth feel. While this process does avoid the problems associated with the cooking process and the process can be carried out essentially automatically on conventional machinery, the process requires long milling times and expensive machinery. Further, the time required to mill conventional ingredients to the extent that the average particle size of the mixed ingredients is reduced to below that particle size where essentially all of the "gritty" mouth feel is eliminated, is quite long.
Thus, as a typical example of that conventional process, the dry ingredients are first reduced in particle size to that extent practical, e.g., sugar, cocoa, milk solids, and the like, are pulverized, e.g., milled or ground to a reduced particle size. The pulverized dry ingredients are then mixed with the fat, flavors and other non-dry ingredients in a mixing/milling device. While these known devices can take various forms, they are generally the compression/rolling/shearing type. Thus, while the devices mix the ingredients, reduce the particle size by grinding and by some shearing of the particles, especially by particle to particle contact, for simplicity herein they will be referred to as mixing or milling devices and the step as a mixing or milling step, since these are major functions thereof. These devices are typically conventional calendering or roller mills.
The mixing operation can typically take from 5 to 24 hours, with the longer mixing times being preferred.
The paste is then passed to a conventional "concher" which again uses similar mechanical action to slowly grind the ingredients into the fat. The conching operation also, and most importantly, serves to develop flavor in the conched ingredients. For example, in a conched chocolate coating, the gritty texture of the paste disappears and the chocolate flavors only begins to appear after about 8 hours of conching. Even with this length of time, the resulting candy would be acceptable only for the lower grade candy coating compounds. For higher grade candy coatings and for candy per se, that conching time must be substantially extended and conching times up to 85 hours are used.
In the aforementioned U.S. patents, an improved candy making process is described wherein that conching time is reduced to less than 30 seconds by conching the paste mixture with high speed shearing and mixing wherein the mixture is subjected to shearing forces having an average shear component of 75.degree. or greater to produce an essentially mechanically generated conching temperature of at least 60.degree. C. and the particle sizes of the solids in the composition are reduced to 40 microns or less. This conching step is carried out by an apparatus which essentially comprises an impeller or anvil rotating within a series of blades forming a circular array thereof. This apparatus generates shear forces on the paste being conched and affects the conching in a very short time. The apparatus for carrying out the conching is considerably less complicated than conventional apparatus and not only very substantially reduces the conching time, but reduces the capital investment for the conching equipment. All of this is accomplished without any decrease in the flavor of the candy developed during the conching step. As explained above, the conching step not only reduces the particle size of the ingredients but develops flavor in the composition.
While this process is a substantial advance in the art, the process still requires a first mixing step of the ingredients, along with the associated longer mixing times and complicated and expensive mixing apparatus. It would, therefore, be of substantial benefit to the art if the mixing process could be considerably shorten in time and carried out with less expensive equipment. This must, of course, be accomplished without loss of flavor in the ultimately produced candy.